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Michael Hsu, acting chief of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), states that companies which issue stablecoins should come up with a common technical standard, comparable to what was done in the early days of the internet. He believes that stablecoins currently lack inter-operability and need shared standards. Hsu at a symposium in Washington, D.C stated, “To ensure that stablecoins are open and inclusive, I believe a standard-setting initiative similar to that undertaken by [the Internet Engineering Task Force] and [World Wide Web Consortium] needs to be established, with representatives, not just from crypto/Web 3 firms but also including acad…

In a leaked video from Zcash Media, Edward Snowden, the famed NSA whistle-blower on government surveillance, revealed his core involvement in the launch of the privacy coin Zcash. Snowden, under the pseudonymous John Dobbertin, joined Zcash creator Zooko Wilcox, Bitcoin core developer Peter Todd, Coin Center's Peter Van Valkenburgh and two others in launching the Zcash blockchain in 2016. The six participants were each given a fragment of the private key needed to produce the coin in a procedure known as "trusted setup." After the launch of the blockchain, each of them destroyed their fragment of the private key in order to secure Zcash from being counterfeited…

On Wednesday, Meta Platforms Inc., formerly known as Facebook, announced its first-quarter 2022 results, declaring a $2.9 billion loss in its Reality Labs division (formerly Facebook’s Oculus division). That's a 61% increase over its $1.8 billion loss in the first quarter of 2021. The Reality Labs division has been spending increasing sums of capital on developing virtual reality and metaverse-related products. Nonetheless, Reality Labs exceeded projections in the first quarter of this year, bringing in $695 million in revenue from sales of VR headsets and Meta Portal hardware. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg remains confident about the company’s direction stating that…

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has announced a roundtable discussion on May 25 to deliberate on a ‘non-intermediated’ model of crypto derivatives trading. This announcement was sparked by FTX US’s recent proposal to modify its Derivatives Clearing Organisation (DCO) license. Under the proposed ‘non-intermediated’ model, the current Futures Commission Merchant (FCM) intermediary would be eliminated, which would streamline trading by reducing the number of times assets change hands, each layer of which entails separate requirements for liquidity holding. According to the CFTC, “A number of registered entities have discussed with CFTC staff proposals…

Gate Ventures, the venture arm of crypto exchange gate.io is all set to raise $200 million for its crypto fund by the end of Q3 2022. According to Kevin Yang, the managing partner of Gate Ventures, the fund will be focused on identifying and investing in alternative layer 1 and layer 2 protocols. Specifically, the firm is looking to invest in protocols that focus on cross-chain interoperability. The firm also has its eyes set on the blockchain gaming sector. According to Kevin Yang, “We have this vision that it will be a multi-chain and multi-layer future, with an open internet which also respects privacy,” https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/04/29…

Flipkart, which is backed by Walmart, has announced the launch of its in-house innovation unit called Flipkart Labs. According to a statement by the company, Flipkart Labs will be focused on testing nonfungible tokens (NFTs), virtual immersive storefronts and play-to-earn features. According to Naren Ravula, VP and Head of product strategy and deployment at Flipkart Labs, “We are in the early days of a paradigm shift from Web2.0 to Web3.0 and this evolution of the web/internet built on the concepts of decentralisation, openness, and greater user utility will have a profound impact across many areas including e-commerce," https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic…

The Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA), Belgium's financial regulatory agency, has issued a new rule that requires crypto exchanges and custodial wallet services in the region to register by May 1st. Existing Service providers have until June to notify the regulator about the “exercise of their activity”, under the law which was finalised in February. Furthermore, these service providers will be required to formally register as Virtual Asset Service Providers before Sept 1st. https://cointelegraph.com/news/belgian-financial-regulator-fsma-to-regulate-crypto-exchange-services

According to a recent post by Yuga Labs, the team has decided against going with a Dutch auction mechanism for their upcoming Metaverse land sales. Instead, the auction which is scheduled for 9 pm ET this Saturday will now follow a flat-price sale model. Each of the land NFTs called ‘Otherdeed’ will now retail for 305 Apecoin (APE). That’s roughly around $6,900 per Otherdeed. A total of 55,000 Otherdeeds will be available for minting from wallets that have passed the KYC verification process. According to the blog post, “NFT ‘Dutch auctions’ are actually bull****. They do not successfully mediate demand, nor do they really negate gas wars in highly-antici…

According to recent reports, Binance has recently shut down accounts of many individuals with personal ties to senior Kremlin Officials. Individuals who have been blocked by Binance include ‘Polina Kovaleva’ who is the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s stepdaughter and ‘Elizaveta Peskova’, who is the daughter of the President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov. The son of Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian oligarch who was indicted by the US Department of Justice for breaking US sanctions, has also been blocked by Binance, as the exchange continues to look for users with ties to sanctioned persons. https://cointelegraph.com/news/binance-blocks-cr…

Panama approved a bill regulating the use of cryptocurrencies in the country. The bill sponsored by Panamanian Congressman Gabriel Silva passed on Thursday and seeks to regulate the trading and use of crypto-assets, the issuance of digital value, tokenisation of precious metals and other assets, and payment systems among many others. While Panama hasn’t formally recognised Bitcoin as legal tender, the new legislation allows for the free use of crypto as means of payment for any transaction. This means that businesses and individuals retain the right to accept or refuse payments in crypto. The law also formally recognises Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (D…

According to a recent tweet by blockchain security firm PeckShield, Deus Finance has suffered a flash loan exploit on the Fantom Network which netted the attacker roughly $13.4 million in crypto assets. The attacker took advantage of a flash loan to fool Deus' smart contracts into reading data from the platform's liquidity pools. This allowed the attacker to raise the value of some assets artificially, borrow funds, and profit after repaying the loan. This is the second exploit faced by Deus Finance in the past two months. Flash loans, first introduced by DeFi lending platform Aave, were intended for arbitrage trading and capital efficiency. However, hackers hav…

It seems like Wall Street gets deeper into crypto with each passing day. In what can only be deemed bullish for the ecosystem, Goldman has offered its first loan facility backed by bitcoin. This means that crypto investors can now borrow fiat money from Goldman using their bitcoin holdings as collateral. This is the first time in Goldman Sachs' history, that such a product has been offered. According to a spokesperson from Goldman, the most interesting part of the facility was its structure and round the clock 24-7-365-day risk management system. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-28/goldman-offers-its-first-bitcoin-backed-loan-in-crypto-push

The Digital Commodity Exchange Act of 2022 (DCEA) proposed by a bipartisan group of US lawmakers aims to grant the Commodity and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) greater influence and control over the crypto spot market. The bill would define "digital commodity" and empower the CFTC to regulate corporations that issue or allow consumers to trade these sorts of tokens, while the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would continue to regulate tokens that are subject to US securities regulations. According to the bill, "The term 'digital commodity' means any form of fungible intangible personal property that can be exclusively possessed and transferred p…

Evmos (formerly Ethermint), a proof-of-stake EVM compatible blockchain built using the Cosmos SDK is finally live on the Cosmos Network after nearly 6 years of development. Evmos first went live in late March, but it quickly ran into a number of issues, including difficulties claiming airdrops. The development team recovered confidence after tidying things up and adding a few features, including the establishment of a new dashboard to assist with staking, governance, and claiming airdrops. According to Evmos founder Federico Kunze Küllmer, “We decided as a community of validators and on the core team to just take a step back and try it again once we have ev…

According to an announcement by ‘The Open Network’ (TON), a decentralised blockchain initially designed by Telegram and abandoned by the platform in mid-2020, users of the messaging app can now send each other crypto via a new telegram wallet bot. The "wallet" bot's initial release would allow users to send and receive Toncoins with no transaction costs, according to the developers. Users can also use their bank cards to buy Bitcoin and Toncoins through the wallet. They can then transmit Bitcoin (BTC) or Toncoin to other users by clicking on the "Wallet" symbol in direct messaging. https://cointelegraph.com/news/telegram-wallet-bot-enables-users-to-send-crypto-i…

This happened when Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan signed The Budapest Memorandum, which brought Ukraine into the global Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Russia, the US and Britain also signed this document which promised none of these countries would invade Ukraine and respect its sovereignties and existing borders while also giving them political independence. The Memorandum stated: “Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.” The document added tha…

Sunday is expected to be the hottest day with temperatures close to or above 50° Celsius. That’s 122 F for us Americans.

Did you know that every single Norwegian citizen indirectly owns 0.000114 BTC? ''Oljefondet'' is a fond controlled by the Norwegian goverment where alot of Norways oil profits goes and are invested. Every norwegian owns an equal part of this fund. ''Oljefondet'' Owns a 1,51% Stake in Microstrategy (source:https://www.nbim.no/no/oljefondet/beholdningene/beholdninger-per-31.12.2019/?fullsize=true) Microstretegy owns approx 40,824 BTC (soruce: https://bitcointreasuries.org/) The Norwegian population is 5 367 580 (source: https://www.ssb.no/befolkning/statistikker/folkemengde/aar-per-1-januar) That means that every Norwegian citizen owns 0…

My Dinner with Andre (1981) directed by Louis Malle

This comes after President Biden agreed to send Ukraine another $800 million in weapons, responding to President Zelenskyy’s urgent call.

According to Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong: “Coinbase’s role here is going to be in a very long-term game. We’re making a long-term investment… We know it’s not going to be a straight shot to bring this technology (in the region). We don’t know exactly how it’s going to evolve but we’re committed to working with bank partners, regulators, most importantly, the Indian people because they showed a real spark of interest in cryptocurrency and there’s a real desire to get access to some of these services and products.” The news comes shortly after Armstrong announced a massive Coinbase hiring spree that will see the exchange’s workforce quadruple with a new 1,000 wo…

...Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and Palantir, revealed his issues with Ethereum and even called the famous Warren Buffet, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, a “sociopathic grandpa from Omaha”!! Thiel also expressed his negative feelings towards JPMorgan top-dog, Jamie Dimon. According to Thiel: “The central banks are bankrupt. We are at the end of the fiat money regime,” Thiel believes that BTC and ETH are at complete opposite ends of the spectrum and that gas fees must decrease and that Ethereum should be completely ‘frictionless’ if it is to work. Thiel further commented negatively on big tech companies like Meta that are “quasi controlled by the governmen…